UNRWA demands Israel apologize over Qassam accusation

By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

The
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Sunday demanded an
apology from Israel over accusations that Gaza militants used a UN vehicle
to transport a homemade rocket.

The world body refuted the charges
at a news conference in Gaza on Sunday. It showed what it said was the
ambulance seen in footage released by the Israel Defense Forces and
presented its driver and rescue workers to reporters.

Rescue worker
Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run with a stretcher to a school in
Jabalya on Friday after he heard that someone there may have been wounded.
The wounded boy had already been moved by the time he arrived, he
said.

"I came back to the car with the stretcher, and I folded it
and threw it inside the car," he said. "If it was a missile, I would not
throw it into the car but would put it in carefully."

The director
of operations for UNRWA, Lionel Brisson, said UN workers do not carry
weapons or armed militants in UN vehicles. "We want an apology from the
Israelis, because we didn't commit any wrongdoing," he said.

The
blurred black-and-white Israeli video showed three men walking toward the
UN vehicle, including one who carried an elongated object. The army said
the object was a rocket of the type used by militants to target southern
Israel.

UN officials said the object was a stretcher, noting that
the man in the footage was carrying it with one hand, a difficult task
with a Qassam, which weighs anywhere from 5.5 to 35
kilograms.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan
Gillerman, has sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanding
the dismissal of Peter Hansen from his position as commissioner-general of
UNRWA.

The letter communicates Israel's claim that Hamas is using
UN ambulances as a means of smuggling arms and terrorists through the Gaza
Strip.

Last Wednesday the Israel Defense Forces documented two men
loading a Qassam rocket onto a van bearing a large UN logo. The
photographed images, taken from an unmanned plane in the Jabalya refugee
camp, were broadcast on network television on Friday night. After the
rocket was loaded, the vehicle left the spot. Army sources say that the
IDF avoided firing at the vehicle, as it had done in other instances,
fearing that it might be a UN ambulance.

UNRWA maintains a fleet of
ambulances in the Gaza Strip, which are used for evacuating wounded. UN
ambulances have been used before to transport armed Palestinians and
weapons. Last May similar scenes were documented by the IDF in Rafah and
in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza.

Hansen told Haaretz that it is
easy to prove that the suspicious looking object in the photo is a
stretcher. According to Hansen, the image broadcast on television shows
two men approaching two ambulances, one of whom is carrying an object that
could not weigh more than a few kilos. He said that he had learned from a
simple Google search that a Qassam rocket is 1.80 meters long and weighs
50 kilos.

The photographic image, on the other hand, Hansen
explained, reveals an object 5 centimeters wide, while the Qassam has a
diameter of 17 centimeters. A piece of cloth, he added, was clearly
visible in the photo, which proves it was an ambulance stretcher, and
naturally, this is what the ambulance crew were carrying. Hansen also said
that he is concerned that the IDF's unfounded accusations might lead to
incitement, since soldiers who give credence to the IDF statement, may
become suspicious of every ambulance that arrives at a checkpoint, putting
UNRWA crews in grave danger.

Gillerman has conveyed information
about the film to Annan, and to his envoy in the region, Terje Larsen,
demanding explanations.

"We will demand an inquiry committee with
the authority to reach unequivocal conclusions - maybe even personal
conclusions - especially regarding Peter Hansen, the UNRWA envoy in
Israel, who for years has expressed anti-Israeli, biased, unrestrained
positions and statements," Gillerman told Israel Radio on
Sunday.

Several months ago Israel filed a complaint in New York
against UNRWA personnel for ignoring the use of UN ambulances by Hamas.
The complaint never earned a significant response from the
director-general. Israel has also voiced objections about Peter Hansen's
conduct, claiming he has consistently adopted a trenchant anti-Israel
line. However, this is the first time that Israel is directly and
unambiguously demanding Hansen's removal from his UNRWA
post.

Hansen, a Danish diplomat, was appointed commissioner-general
of UNRWA several years ago, making him one of the most senior officials in
the organization.